#09-14-2021

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[innbo-memory]

2021-09-14

Another day done, pals Remember to find ways to enjoy even the weekdays. 💜 My evening today: jazz music, candles, reading in the dark with occasional scratches for Nari

[toskarinarchive]

Toskarin Database

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[tribulatedray]

SIZZURP

A vibe I enjoy matching Bitter taste. . . but smooth. Considerate enough to coat your throat. It welcomes me. It cares. A good host who makes me warm and relaxed.

[jetix]

2021-09-14

[calderacitylovers]

Zutara SlowBurn FanFiction: Personal Favs, part I

·        I AM STILL HERE by owedbetter Published: 2017-10-09 | 77K words | 7 Chapters

After the Last Agni Kai K heals Z with the help of bloodbending. Very sweet.

 ·        THE SUMMIT by AJLenoire

Chronicles post-war years, as Gaang and other characters gather for annual summits to keep peace and build relationships between the Four Nations. Katara yearns for a bigger purpose than the Avatar’s companion and slowly grows into a shrewd diplomat. Very sweet slow burn ZK story. Has mature scenes.

 ·        CLOTHE ME IN SEASONS, DRESS ME IN SNOW by sadladybug Published: 2015-01-05 | 62K words | 7 Chapters

Follows old Zuko as he reflects on his life and what would have been if he kept Katara closer. Absolutely beautiful, but also a devastatingly heart-breaking story about loss and pain.

 ·        SILENT DECLARATIONS by Megara Pike (Megara_Pike) Published: 2021-01-20 | 2,6K words

A short story based on animation by Hayley Wong. Z finds K asleep in her study and carries her to bed. Very sweet, gentle story.

 ·        COVERED IN YOU by evergreenonthehorizon Published: 2021-04-02 | 55K words | 14 Chapters

Eight years after the war Z convinces K to take on a role of a Southern Water Tribe ambassador in the Caldera city. Both are completely clueless about each other’s feelings. Features political talks, big gestures, and a ball. Very cute, sweet slow-burn story. Has mature scenes.

 ·        TEN STRIDES IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION by evergreenonthehorizon Published: 2021-04-03 | 29K Words | 12 Chapters

A collection of short stories filling in the gaps between some of the events of ATLAS3 and up to the Last Agni Kai. Features accidental cuddling, embracing in the rain, sharing a bed for warmth, post-Ember Island Theater discussions, being discovered, waiting to be kissed, Suki & Katara being good friends, battle plans, Zuko & Sokka getting drunk, slow burn & angst. Very sweet.

 ·        THE SWAY OF THE SUN by TheBlackBriarSparrow Published: Published: 2019-10-14 | 102K Words | 27 Chapters

Two years post-war Gaang reunites in Caldera city for a secret party in honor of the overworked Fire Lord’s birthday. Rebels attack the palace setting a thrilling consequence of events in motion. Adventures, investigations, and fights ensue. Z & K work together and enlist old friends to help find missing people. Beautiful slow-burn story with an exciting plot.

·        A WARM EMBRACE by ewinkie Published: 2020-10-06 | 19K Words | 7 Chapters

An ATLAS3 rewrite from Southern Riders to the Last Agni Kai. Katara and Zuko have to hide in a cave following their encounter with Yon Rha. Comforting turns to cuddling, which turns to waking up on Appa's tail in each other's arms. Katara is shocked at how comfortable she is. Zuko is shocked that Katara doesn't hate him for it. Features sharing a bed, being discovered, slowburn, and lots of teenage silliness.

 ·        FOLLOWING BLUE by Boogum Published: 2018-11-07 | 39K Words | 10 Chapters

ATLA S2 rewrite. After Katara falls from Appa’s saddle during a pursuit, the Blue Spirit becomes her reluctant companion and helps her reunite with her friends. Ba Sing Se scenes are completely rewritten, and Z ends up joining the Gaang much earlier. Thrilling beginning, sweet middle, average ending.

 ·        ANOTHER WORD FOR ALCHEMY by FanPanda13 Published: 2014-08-19 | 108K words | 24 Chapters

Five years post-war Aang summons old friends for a summit and invites them on a trip to investigate mysterious locations where he experiences loss of bending. Features Gaang setting Z & K up, travelling on Appa like in the olden days, lots of sparring, royal courting, magnificent navy ships & war ballons. Thrilling story with fun banter between old friends. Slowburn, mature content.

 ·        CONSUME ME WITH FIRE, FLOOD ME WITH DESIRE by Dacamia Published: 2020-08-14 | 86K words | 24 Chapters

Steamy ATLAS2 and ATLA S3 rewrite. Z & K accidentally meetup on their way to Ba Sing Se and decide to travel together. Features aged-up characters, lots of intimate scenes, staying in a beautiful cave, helping villagers, betrayal in Ba Sing Se, reunion, forgiveness, etc. Explicit mature content.

 ·        ROOTS AND WINGS by zukoscomet Published: 2020-08-14 | 250K words | 25 Chapters

A series of short stories of Z & K as they grow closer, confess their love for one another and start a family.

 ·        THOSE WHO FAVOR FIRE by hiwasseelane Published: 2021-05-02 |29K Words | 13 Chapters

An ATLAS3 rewrite. Sweet, teen-appopriate.

Here’s a link to Part II of my personal favs.

Here’s a link to Wholesome Zutara Short Stories.

[steadfastabiha]

1.) Haifa Massacre 1937

2.) Jerusalem Massacre 1937

3.) Haifa Massacre 1938

4.) Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939

5.) Haifa Massacre 1939

6.) Haifa Massacre 1947

7.) Abbasiya Massacre 1947

8.) Al-Khisas Massacre 1947

9.) Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947

10.) Jerusalem Massacre 1947

11.) Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947

12.) Jaffa Massacre 1948

13.) Khan Yunis Massacre 1956

14.) Jerusalem Massacre 1967

15.) Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982

16.) Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990

17.) Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994

18.) Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002

19.) Gaza Massacre 2008-09

20.) Gaza Massacre 2012

21.) Gaza Massacre 2014

22.) Gaza Massacre 2018-19

23.) Gaza Massacre 2021

24.) Current Gaza Genocide 2023-2024

Still believe it started on October 7th, 2023?

[bad268]

Writing Inktober 2023

300 word minimum and no repeats are the challenges this year. Maybe. Hopefully. Probably. (haha yes)

BTW the medal emojis are the winners from the polls :)

01/10 Dream

Sebastian Montoya X Reader (W.C. 386)

02/10 Spiders

Seth Borden X Reader (W.C. 338)

03/10 Path

Max Verstappen X Reader (W.C. 367)

04/10 Dodge

Benny Rodriguez X Reader (W.C. 348)

05/10 Map

Sebastian Vettel X Reader (W.C. 338)

06/10 Golden

Justin Herbert X Reader (W.C. 342)

07/10 Drip

TMR Newt X Reader (W.C. 342) 🥈

08/10 Toad Sacrifice

Andrea Kimi Antonelli X Reader (W.C. 338)

09/10 Bounce

Marcus Armstrong X Reader (W.C. 384)

10/10 Fortune

Johnny Cade X Reader (W.C. 485) 🥉

11/10 Wander

Peter Parker X Reader (W.C. 402) 🥇

12/10 Spicey Scandal

Pierre Gasly X Reader (W.C. 391)

13/10 Rise Tonight

Colby Brock X Reader (W.C. 370)

14/10 Castle

Oscar Piastri X Reader (W.C. 370)

15/10 Dagger Nightmare

Lando Norris X Reader (W.C. 419)

16/10 Angel

Mick Schumacher X Reader (W.C. 395)

17/10 Demon

Kimi Raikkonen X Reader (W.C. 327)

18/10 Saddle

Daniel Ricciardo X Reader (W.C. 318)

19/10 Plump Wet

Ollie Bearman X Reader (W.C. 365)

20/10 Frost

Paul Aron X Reader (W.C. 389)

21/10 Chains Bouquet

Charles Leclerc X Reader (W.C. 369)

22/10 Scratchy Flight

Joe Burrow X Reader (W.C. 390)

23/10 Celestial Redeemer

Corpse Husband X Reader (W.C. 400)

24/10 Shallow Chosen

P! SBI X Reader (W.C. 358)

25/10 Dangerous

Callum Ilott X Reader (W.C. 310)

26/10 Remove Shots

Dennis Hauger X Reader (W.C. 348)

27/10 Beast

Christian Lundgaard X Reader (W.C. 339)

28/10 Sparkle

Dino Beganovic X Reader (W.C. 406)

29/10 Massive Approval

Felipe Drugovich X Reader (W.C. 358)

30/10 Rush

Clement Novalak X Reader (W.C. 386)

31/10 Fire

Pato O’Ward X Reader (W.C. 343)

Bonus: Break

Tadashi Hamada X Reader (W.C. 363)

Average W.C. 369

Want to read other years’ Inktober stories, check these out:

2021 // 2022 // 2024 (Coming Soon)

On a side note, I looked back at last year’s entries, and I definitely thought Bouquet was Banquet, so instead of admitting I was wrong, I did it as a sub this year. If you noticed, no you didn’t :)

Also funny story about Shallow, I kept reading it as Swallow, so I couldn't do it

MASTERLIST // HITLIST

[jiminjamms]

sex therapy :: 14. sucker for pain

chapter tags/warnings: misogynistic! naoya. pet names ("bimbo"). dirty talking. nonconsenual undertones. infidelity/adultery. strong language. humiliation. classism.

word count: 3.8k

notes: i published this story for the first time in october 2021 on wattpad, and i'm so thankful for and overwhelmed by the support and love that sex therapy has received over the past year. thank you for watching me and my story grow. xoxo

fic masterlist | 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Eat. Sleep. Fuck. Repeat.

This would be the mantra Naoya would live by tonight.

The little date he was taking you on was merely a prequel to the chain of bedroom events he had schemed for the evening. Because warming up first was important, no?

As a wonderful husband, Naoya took his precious wife out to dinner at Shibuya’s Cé La Vi, a top-floor restaurant that may not be as vertigo-inducing as its famous Marina Bay Sands counterpart in Singapore, but offered a menu and skyline views second to none.

He had even requested an outdoor table under the fairy lights for the romantic atmosphere, where both the amber hues and soft jazz washed the vicinity with warmth and peace. Exactly what Naoya also needed after his last twenty hours filled with hurried negotiations with publishers, a long flight back to Tokyo, and many private lectures from his outraged father.

At least that was all done now.

Sighing, Naoya gestured at a nearby waiter, who disappeared and returned with a glass of expensive tequila several minutes later. Eight in the evening might be far too early for Naoya to down his third shot of Don Julio, but he needed to reward himself for completing a hectic itinerary without a wink of shuteye in between.

With the drink, he quietly soaked in the low hum of chatter that mingled with the gentle clinking of cutlery. The ambiance was so miraculous that Naoya didn’t know why he hadn’t taken you here earlier.

Now that he thought about it, when was the last time he had taken you out on a proper date anyway?

Oh, when he took you out two weeks ago to skydive in…

No, wait that was with Mari.

He was only two and a half glasses in, but the liquor was already messing with his memory.

So when…?

“We haven’t done anything like this in a long, long while,” you commented when you must have noted his extended silence at the dinner table, although Naoya found it quite funny that you seemingly read his thoughts instead.

He swirled the liquor in his glass but decided against another sip. “You think so?” he asked as harmlessly as possible. “When was the last time?”

Cutting into a scallop on your plate, you bit your inner cheek. “Our…honeymoon.”

Holy crap, that Caribbean trip was months ago. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” you deadpanned.

Oh.

Okay, he might have thought a lot more about spending time with his mistress, and he hadn’t exactly been keeping track of every single date he went on with you, but he certainly did not expect to have such an abysmal track record with his own wife.

Not that he felt guilty about his absence in your life.

Besides, you had the money to entertain yourself as you wished. Whether because you were blinded by sheer stupidity or his bank account, you thankfully didn’t complain much either. All Naoya had to do was to keep you happy and ignorant because—to paraphrase his father’s own words—if Naoya flopped this marriage with the COO's daughter, he would not be welcomed in the Zenin household again.

The difficult part, however, was that you were hard to please.

That was what happened to little girls who grew up spoiled by daddy’s money, Naoya supposed. Mari, on the other hand, would have absolutely been overjoyed in your position. Hell, even Naoya himself—who merely grew up as a spare heir—would have shown some gratitude.

“Sorry that I’ve been so occupied.” The Zenin CEO had to inject whatever sympathy and sincerity he had into his apology before sampling his risotto. “I’ve been buried in work ever since I joined the executive suite earlier this year. I’ve had a lot to catch up on.”

“I know,” you responded very matter-of-factly. “And I understand. You’ve been busy with meetings.”

Right. Meetings with his board in addition to his, well, other more discreet ‘meetings’ where he pounded his paramour into oblivion (but let’s not talk about that, shall we?).

As he pushed the thought away, he placed his fork down in exchange for his drink. “That’s why I invited you for dinner—to spend extra time with you. I’ll make things up to you even more later.”

You glanced up from your meal, blinking rapidly but the ambivalence apparent in your gaze. “Really? Like how?”

Sex, you motherfucking dimwit.

How much more obvious did he have to be?

Of course, he instead replied with, “You’ll see.”

He hadn’t told you his idea to rail your brains out because he didn’t feel obligated to, but if he wanted to a) get his father off his ass and b) be a baby daddy by morning, he had quite the mission to accomplish. Besides, if he calculated the numbers correctly in his head, today was still within your fertility window. A later day in the schedule, but still a fertile time for his wife, nonetheless. This was the perfect time to focus on you, particularly since he wouldn’t be distracted by Mari for some time. Perhaps arriving early from Mexico wasn’t too much of a bad thing.

Tonight, the deed didn’t seem too difficult to do either, thanks to how provocatively you dressed. Since when did you wear off-the-shoulder mini dresses? Was this from your New York fashion haul three months back?

“It’d be nice if you could apologize to me first.”

Naoya froze with his glass by his mouth at your unanticipated comment. What were you even going on about? “Didn’t I already say sorry for not spending time with you?” This was what he meant by how ungrateful you were.

Curling your lips inward, you inhaled sharply. “That wasn’t what I was—”

When the conversation was unexpectedly interrupted by a buzzing at the table, Naoya reached for his phone only to be greeted with a blank screen. Rather, he looked up to see you wiping your hands and staring at your device, mirroring Naoya’s own confusion as your brows creased at an unsaved number.

“Spam,” you concluded and pushed the device away once the caller eventually reached voicemail. “What I was saying,” you began even as your face contorted momentarily with reluctance, “was that you never told me you were away from Japan. I didn’t even know where you were or when you would be back had I not called your secretary.”

Wow, that was what you wanted an apology for?

What an entitled brat.

Admittedly, Naoya should have texted you before he vanished into thin air, but a homemaker like you certainly had no business in his personal schedule. Had he truly had an investor conference to attend, Naoya was certain you would have been just as meddlesome, which was why he found the situation even more sardonic when you confirmed his suspicions by adding, “Sending me a text isn’t too difficult, you know.”

Just who the hell did you think you were?

Don’t think he had not noticed how confrontational you had been as of late, criticizing his actions and then dishing out instructions as though you were anywhere near the place to do so. This change from your typically submissive nature was uninvited, to say the least. Like, at the bare minimum, you could look at your own husband as you spoke, and Naoya wondered if your actions were simply a phase in the relationship or a reveal of the real you. Whatever the reason, he wanted his good and obedient wife back.

“Well then, my apologies." His eye twitched as he spoke, and nothing now could hide the contempt rising in his tone. “Next time, I’ll make sure my assistants send you my entire itinerary from when I sleep to when I use the restroom to—"

Naoya couldn’t even think through his annoyance because, at this point, your phone was ringing for what must be the third time and that irked him even further.

“Please!” he scoffed, his vexation bursting through his voice. “Just excuse yourself and pick that shit up, good lord!”

At least that much you listened to. You pardoned yourself, stepping away just as Naoya pinched the bridge of his nose. On the one date he finally organized with his wife, you just had to ruin his mood with your shit attitude and table manners. Fantastic.

After one long huff, Naoya swung around in his seat and caught the attention of a nearby waiter.

The fuming executive then pointed at his glass.

“Another shot, ASAP."

As much as you were guilty of self-deprecation, you were not masochistic enough to simply swallow your husband’s insults over dinner.

‘Sex, you motherfucking dimwit.’

Simply thinking back to that line sent tiny pricks to your chest.

Did Naoya really think that, just because he mumbled that to himself under his breath, you wouldn’t hear him? What made you even more upset was that, when you asked for an apology, he could not even recognize his wrongs. There was more that you hoped to confront him about, too—particularly about the rumors of his extramarital affairs—but you had half the mind to shut up given his splenetic fury.

Whoever called you, however, thankfully provided you with a reason for reprieve.

You rushed out of the main restaurant venue as you curiously stared at your phone, noticing the missed calls from an unknown number. When the same contact information appeared on your screen in its fourth ring, you pressed the ‘Accept’ button only for the other line to greet you first.

“I still have your dress, kiddo.”

Kiddo.

Only one person called you that.

“Choso?” you nearly shouted in disbelief, unintentionally garnering the attention of some bystanders.

“That’s me alright,” the therapist answered, his reply cool and composed as though he never questioned the fact that his hands landed on your phone number. “I was just about to give up on reaching you.”

Overwhelmed, you sighed. “Sorry, I’m rather busy at the moment.”

“Right, right,” he mulled, a faint rumble sneaking in his tone. Choso then clicked his tongue against his teeth, and you could almost picture the blasé manner in which he would recline in a seat as some shuffling echoed over the line, which would have normally been irrelevant until he added, “Well, I’m downstairs.”

“What?!” was your first reaction. Now, you were certainly getting weird stares. Downstairs, as in, where? “Are you in—”

“Yes, Shibuya. You’re at Cé La Vi right now, aren’t you? Take the elevator down to the first floor. My car’s parked right outside the building’s main doors. That Dolce & Gabbana outfit I made you change out of before the club, I didn’t have a chance to return that since you stormed out of the meeting last night.”

You shut your dropped jaw. “The dress I remember but,” your gaze then narrowed, “how do you know where I am?”

The call suddenly grew quiet, the lull stretching for what must be an hour as Choso carefully contemplated his next words. “When you’re in the right business,” he hinted darkly, no doubt making a reference to his underbelly occupation, “information isn’t hard to come by once you know the right people.”

An assassin with eyes all over the city, huh?

Well, that explained how he got your number as well, albeit you would not be surprised if he had dug through the therapist office’s database for that instead. Sometimes, you had to wonder how an upper-class lady like you got entangled with a man like him, but a five-minute round trip to the first floor could not possibly hurt, right?

“I’ll meet you, then,” you eventually replied and ended the call.

Catching the first elevator car down, you had no trouble spotting the iconic blue Corvette convertible that stood outside the building’s entrance. Upon your approach, Choso rolled down his window and stuck his head out. This evening, his jet-black strands were pulled back into one low ponytail rather than two, his prominent jawline appearing even sharper against the nighttime backdrop.

No wonder this man had a whole harem in the club.

“Hey,” he hummed as his inky eyes ran down your figure, his gaze lingering a little longer on your exposed collarbone before traveling down to your legs. “I like your style.”

At the compliment, you looked away, feeling a bizarre prickle in your stomach. “I’m on a dinner date.”

“With Naoya?” Given how the therapists have recently revealed their disdain for your husband, you were not surprised to see Choso grimace. “Why…would you do that to yourself?”

Great question. “He’s paying, so I can’t complain.”

Choso pressed his lips outward, nodding when he could not argue against that. “I see.”

During the silence that ensued, you clicked your heels together, too busy floundering in the burning presence of your companion that you almost forgot the reason you were here in the first place. “Do…you have my dress?”

Nonchalantly, the man pointed to the back with his thumb. “In the trunk. What? You’re in a rush or something?”

You nodded slowly. “Naoya doesn’t know I’m down here," you explained but, given the psychological pain that your husband had inflicted on you, there was no good reason for guilt to be tugging at your lungs.

Even Choso narrowed his eyes. “You’re going back to that asshole?”

Another great question.

Without saying much, Naoya already made clear that his intention with you tonight was grounded only in sexual gratification, that he viewed you as nothing beyond—as he had put it—‘a motherfucking dimwit.’ Despite the pain, you never failed to find a reason to crawl back to the husband that lashed at your heart.

“Naoya is already angry at me,” you eventually remarked, twirling the edges of your dress. “If I don’t get back...”

“Then what? Even more of a reason to ditch him, to be honest. Maybe that will teach him a lesson for all the times he left you.” Choso was not the type to talk much, but he inevitably had the uncanny ability to leave you dumbstruck once he did. Oblivious to your state (or not), he then casually adjusted the braided bracelet at his wrist. “Better things to do with your time than stay with him.”

Funny that your first instinct was to defend Naoya again. However, even if you were to dutifully return to your husband, he would internally welcome you with apathy, his only goal to leave you smitten as a kitten just so he would have a pussy to play with.

Abandoning Naoya also came with one other problem, though. “There isn’t much else for me to do.”

How pitiful was that?

Sure, you had a stack of invitations to various charity dinners and networking parties, but—even with all the riches and respect in the world—you found those events pretentious, repetitive, and dull.

You half-expected Choso to mock you. (Because, really, who were you to complain about first-world problems?) However, the man just paused slightly, a dash of sympathy running over his expression as he then motioned to the empty shotgun seat.

“I could take you out for a ride.”

Your brows shot up. Tempting. “Where to?”

“Since I’m free tonight, I was going to take myself somewhere by Tokyo Bay—one of my favorite spots around,” Choso explained as he ran both his hands through his hair. “Although, if you’re interested, I could show you the area, too.”

At the proposal, you tried not to smile too obviously. Who knew that a hardened part-time hitman actually had such a soft spot?

“Then I’d love to.”

Choso drove off the second you jumped into the Corvette, the convertible greeting you with its familiar ashy honeysuckle scents and a The Neighbourhood tune. With a long exhale, you sank into the red leather seat and stared out the window, watching the nearby scenery transform from skyscrapers to highway signs.

Quietly, you relished the soothing silence in the car that was a refuge from the charged cacophony over dinner, reflecting on the steps that brought you to this moment. What a twist of fate, how the man who had detested you weeks ago was now a warm beacon that offered light in the merciless sea, providing you more comfort than you'd like to admit.

When you unconsciously turned in his direction, you tried to not stare too obviously at the metal on his ears, the piercings gleaming as they caught beams from bypassing streetlamps. You might have had a rough start with Choso Kamo, but you still found him ridiculously attractive with his oversized white sweater and black jeans, hiding his athletic physique underneath.

“Need me to pull up Google Maps?” you asked upon realizing your extended ogling.

“No,” he shot back. “I know this city like the back of my hand.”

And Choso sure seemed like he did.

He was focused solely on driving, his palms clasped around the steering wheel as his fingers drummed to the bass of ‘Sweater Weather.’

This close to him, you noticed how his hands were rough and calloused—almost definitive sign of working out. Right where he rolled up his sleeves, veins also weaved beneath his forearm tattoos, the inked vines something you never had the chance to examine extensively either.

This time, you weren’t too discreet given that he caught your gaze. “What?”

Oops. “Nothing.”

You turned away to look ahead, trying to calm your frenzied heart by observing some uninteresting cars on the expressway. A proper lady like you knew better than to gawk at someone for a prolonged time, yet you still got caught red-handed. How embarrassing.

Slumping further into your seat, you pouted as your weird way in mitigating the internal humiliation. “Just…keep your eyes on the road.”

While Choso did as he was told, he held back a low chuckle. “And you could keep your eyes on me.”

“But I wasn’t—!" A complete lie, but you still shouted with flailing arms, defenses hopeless.

Yet, what really disarmed you was Choso’s faint smirk.

One minute, you were frustrated and flustered; the next, you were simply stunned at the amused tilt in his lips, all because his smile was so rare. There was something enchanting about the cocky way Choso grinned as he stepped on the accelerator, the maniacal gleam in his eyes as he stared ahead, the bright colors of the Tokyo evening that glittered behind him.

“Jesus, take the fucking wheel,” you muttered like a starstruck teenager.

“What’s wrong?” he asked harmlessly because this man definitely heard you over the music. He threw you a quick glance even as the smile on his lips stayed. “I mean, you could keep staring if you want to, bimbo. I won’t judge.”

Mouth opened to back talk, your ambitions immediately got cut short as Choso moved a hand from the steering wheel to your inner thigh. While you hid your gasp at the unexpected contact, you only hoped that he did not notice the way you tensed under his searing touch.

But Choso noticed, alright.

“Hm, why are you so quiet all of a sudden?” Choso pressed again, his focus still on the lane as though he was not caressing you, massaging you, his thumb running in hypnotic circles centimeters away from the dull throb between your legs,

How he managed to maintain his composure in such a situation was a mystery given that you, unlike him, gripped hard at the side of your seat.

“Because…” you hissed after mustering all effort.

Then, you stopped.

How could you respond while completely distracted by the tightening in your stomach, practically holding your breath as his hand crept up higher? It was not helping that his fingers were so thick, that he had a small dagger printed by a knuckle, that his scent was reminiscent of burning maple leaves during a New England fall.

“‘Because…?’ Because what?” Choso asked, knocking your thoughts loose momentarily because he—on the other hand—did not miss your incomplete answer. His nails dug into your skin, nearly making you yelp at the incredible burn. “What’s the issue? I don’t remember you being this shy with the other therapists around.”

The steeliness that underlined his tone…

Was Choso still hung up about your frisky flings with Toji and Sukuna? Even though you should have never gotten sexually involved with them in the first place, you never would have thought that Choso would hold such a grudge.

In response, you cautiously observed his side profile. “Are…you jealous?”

He closed his eyes momentarily at the question, indescribable salaciousness etched on his lovely face, and he shuddered slightly. His eyes opened back as a sharpened glare, Adam’s apple bobbing as the result of a drawn-out swallow.

“Oh, baby,” he growled, and it was the backward tilt of his head that left your mind spinning, “you have no idea.”

Traveling beneath your dress, his hand roamed a little higher, then higher again, his pinky finger brushing at your panties’ seam such that if he decided to travel up any further, he might just feel how miserable and soaked you were.

Just hurt me, you begged silently, legs squeezing together subconsciously as you feel a delicious heat churning through your body, biting back a moan when Choso gripped hard at your thigh before smacking at the flesh.

“Harder,” you accidentally pleaded out loud, immediately clamping your hands over your mouth.

Unsurprisingly, your insanely handsome driver turned to you. When you met his gaze, you only wished that you hadn’t because Choso had a gaze that left you weak in the knees, the murky pool in his eyes enough to leave you whittled to a frantic and blubbering mess.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—"

“Well, I'm curious what your husband would say,” he interjected, debauchery bleeding in his tone, “when I send you home my handprints on your ass cheeks?”

Wow, that really took you aback.

“‘When?’” you bleated. Not ‘if?’

“Yes, ‘when,’” he confirmed with a hoarse thrum. His overflowing confidence clouded your head with something heady, something intoxicating. As much as you think you should tell Choso to stop, words were lodged in your throat once he forced your legs apart with one firm pull, and while you found pleasure in the pain, it was his next suggestion that sent sweet vibrations straight down your spine: “Because I wonder what would happen once I spread you over the car hood and took you right there.”

last chapter || next chapter

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surveillance advertising to financial fraud pipeline

Monday (October 2), I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab. On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.

Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

It's hard to be your authentic self while you're under surveillance. For that reason alone, the rise and rise of the surveillance industry – an unholy public-private partnership between cops, spooks, and ad-tech scum – is a plague on humanity and a scourge on the Earth:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

But beyond the psychic damage surveillance metes out, there are immediate, concrete ways in which surveillance brings us to harm. Ad-tech follows us into abortion clinics and then sells the info to the cops back home in the forced birth states run by Handmaid's Tale LARPers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/29/no-i-in-uter-us/#egged-on

And even if you have the good fortune to live in a state whose motto isn't "There's no 'I" in uter-US," ad-tech also lets anti-abortion propagandists trick you into visiting fake "clinics" who defraud you into giving birth by running out the clock on terminating your pregnancy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

The commercial surveillance industry fuels SWATting, where sociopaths who don't like your internet opinions or are steamed because you beat them at Call of Duty trick the cops into thinking that there's an "active shooter" at your house, provoking the kind of American policing autoimmune reaction that can get you killed:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/us/swatting-sentence-casey-viner/index.html

There's just a lot of ways that compiling deep, nonconsensual, population-scale surveillance dossiers can bring safety and financial harm to the unwilling subjects of our experiment in digital spying. The wave of "business email compromises" (the infosec term for impersonating your boss to you and tricking you into cleaning out the company bank accounts)? They start with spear phishing, a phishing attack that uses personal information – bought from commercial sources or ganked from leaks – to craft a virtual Big Store con:

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/business-email-compromise

It's not just spear-phishers. There are plenty of financial predators who run petty grifts – stock swindles, identity theft, and other petty cons. These scams depend on commercial surveillance, both to target victims (e.g. buying Facebook ads targeting people struggling with medical debt and worried about losing their homes) and to run the con itself (by getting the information needed to pull of a successful identity theft).

In "Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud," a new National Bureau of Academic Research paper, a trio of business-school profs – Bo Bian (UBC), Michaela Pagel (WUSTL) and Huan Tang (Wharton) quantify the commercial surveillance industry's relationship to finance crimes:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31692

The authors take advantage of a time-series of ZIP-code-accurate fraud complaint data from the Consumer Finance Protection Board, supplemented by complaints from the FTC, along with Apple's rollout of App Tracking Transparency, a change to app-based tracking on Apple mobile devices that turned of third-party commercial surveillance unless users explicitly opted into being spied on. More than 96% of Apple users blocked spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

In other words, they were able to see, neighborhood by neighborhood, what happened to financial fraud when users were able to block commercial surveillance.

What happened is, fraud plunged. Deprived of the raw material for committing fraud, criminals were substantially hampered in their ability to steal from internet users.

While this is something that security professionals have understood for years, this study puts some empirical spine into the large corpus of qualitative accounts of the surveillance-to-fraud pipeline.

As the authors note in their conclusion, this analysis is timely. Google has just rolled out a new surveillance system, the deceptively named "Privacy Sandbox," that every Chrome user is being opted in to unless they find and untick three separate preference tickboxes. You should find and untick these boxes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/how-turn-googles-privacy-sandbox-ad-tracking-and-why-you-should

Google has spun, lied and bullied Privacy Sandbox into existence; whenever this program draws enough fire, they rename it (it used to be called FLoC). But as the Apple example showed, no one wants to be spied on – that's why Google makes you find and untick three boxes to opt out of this new form of surveillance.

There is no consensual basis for mass commercial surveillance. The story that "people don't mind ads so long as they're relevant" is a lie. But even if it was true, it wouldn't be enough, because beyond the harms to being our authentic selves that come from the knowledge that we're being observed, surveillance data is a crucial ingredient for all kinds of crime, harassment, and deception.

We can't rely on companies to spy on us responsibly. Apple may have blocked third-party app spying, but they effect nonconsensual, continuous surveillance of every Apple mobile device user, and lie about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

That's why we should ban commercial surveillance. We should outlaw surveillance advertising. Period:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/ban-online-behavioral-advertising

Contrary to the claims of surveillance profiteers, this wouldn't reduce the income to ad-supported news and other media – it would increase their revenues, by letting them place ads without relying on the surveillance troves assembled by the Google/Meta ad-tech duopoly, who take the majority of ad-revenue:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

We're 30 years into the commercial surveillance pandemic and Congress still hasn't passed a federal privacy law with a private right of action. But other agencies aren't waiting for Congress. The FTC and DoJ Antitrust Divsision have proposed new merger guidelines that allow regulators to consider privacy harms when companies merge:

https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FTC-2023-0043-1569

Think here of how Google devoured Fitbit and claimed massive troves of extremely personal data, much of which was collected because employers required workers to wear biometric trackers to get the best deal on health care:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/google-fitbit-merger-would-cement-googles-data-empire

Companies can't be trusted to collect, retain or use our personal data wisely. The right "balance" here is to simply ban that collection, without an explicit opt-in. The way this should work is that companies can't collect private data unless users hunt down and untick three "don't spy on me" boxes. After all, that's the standard that Google has set.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/29/ban-surveillance-ads/#sucker-funnel

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[lindalofbroome]

Roddacember 2023!!

Roddacember runs during December to celebrate all of Emily Rodda’s books. With a new prompt every day, make a piece of fan content of your choice. You can draw some art, write fic, make a playlist, rant about something, or whatever you vibe with! Remember to tag it #Roddacember 2023 so we can check it out <3 I’ve also created an AO3 collection for those who would like to write fics!

Update

This is my attempt at taking the best of the past years and bringing something for everyone. What I've come up with are three levels of abstraction that (hopefully) serve as different levels of difficulty. The first week-ish draws more from 2019's style, and the last couple weeks are the more recent style, with the middle being a segue between them. (i kinda struggled to make questions, but you're welcome to use the prompts as keywords for your own!)

Notes

A reminder that you don’t have to commit to every day. Take care of yourself. You can make it more manageable by skipping days. It’s also okay to alter the prompt slightly for grammatical purposes, if you so wish (e.g. growth –> growing) or to cut out irrelevant words (e.g. animal or monster -> animal). Feel free to interpret the prompts as metaphorically or as literally as you want! If there’s anything you are confused about, feel free to ask me in the notes or DMs or whatever. You can also check out what the fandom did previously at #Roddacember 2022, #Roddacember 2021, #Roddacember 2020 and #Roddacember 2019.

Prompts in text below:

Your Favourite

01. Character 02. Place 03. Animal or monster 04. Something you wish was real 05. Magic 06. People, culture, or tradition 07. Filli❔ 08. Relationship of any kind 09. Symbols or signs

Memorable Moments:

10. Epic 11. Courage 12. Deception 13. Power 14. Foreshadowing 15. Playful 16. Envy 17. Solution

Abstract:

18. Ripples 19. Design 20. Trade 21. Nurture 22. Technology 23. Intricacy 24. Mend 25. Twisted 26. Pathway 27. Watch 28. Growth 29. Time 30. Unity 31. Essence of Rodda

[svtminji]

^_−☆ JEONGMI MASTERLIST

main masterlist. — jeongmi tag. — jeongmi asks.

(f) = fluff — (s) = suggestive — (m) = mature ☆ please read at your own discretion, warnings are included at the top of each post !

INFORMATION - OVERVIEW

get to know my ship chart. — mood board. — ‘95 relationship. — idol relationship. — seventeen & minji memorable moments.

YEARS ❪ PRE-DEBUT ❫

N/A

YEARS ❪ 2015-2020 ❫

2020:

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ NOVEMBER — how it began ／ how svt reacted to jeongmi’s relationship

YEARS ❪ 2021 - PRESENT ❫

2023:

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ MAY — dark fights and lonely nights

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ JUNE — 11:00 PM

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ SEPTEMBER — secret milan meetings (s)

NEWS

dating rumor + confirmation. — going public. — announcing engagement.

FAN BASED

jeongmi fan favorites.

SOCIAL MEDIA

INSTAGRAM:

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ 2020s — 10/10/22 - 09/27/23 - 10/04/23

WEVERSE:

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ 2020s — 6/14/23

YOUTUBE:

☆ ͏͏͏͏͏͏ ͏͏͏͏͏͏⠀⠀ SVT-REC — mizuki’s day out in japan

TEXTS

N/A

jeongmi masterlist go crazy!!! 😝 this might contain future spoilers so watch out 🐈‍⬛🐈🐈‍⬛🐈

[dahlia-shifts]

Introduction (NCT DR)

I promised I'll be making intros to my DRs, so let's start off with my Main DR ! I have not shifted to this DR yet, but it's the one I try to shift to almost every night and it's one of the two DRs that stay consistent in my scripts !

Time ratio : 1 Hour CR = 5 Months DR (I know it may seem like a lot, but I really want to experience as much as I can on each shift.

First shift : November, 2015. I will be shifting to the day I get picked to debut in NCT. The next couple of months will be filled with practicing and getting to know the members. I want to live through these moments, and not just remember them as memories. The morning of my first shift will be filled with my own training, going to vocal lessons, study sessions, since I don't attend school, and by the end of the day, I get called to a meeting, where I find out I'm set to debut with NCT.

Personal Info

Name : (CR name) ; Jung Soobin (Korean Name)

D.O.B : December 08, 2000

Age As Of First Shift : 14

Zodiac Sign : Sagittarius

Height : 150 cm (As Of First Shift)

Nationality : Korean-Bulgarian

Ethnicity : Slavic/Bulgarian

Idol Info

Stage Name : Dahlia

Training Period : Since early 2010

Positions : Main Dancer, Lead Vocalist, Lead Rapper, Face Of The Group, Maknae (127)

Debut : The 7th Sense (NCT U - April 09, 2016) ; Fire Truck (NCT 127 - July 10, 2016) ; Chewing Gum (NCT Dream - August 27, 2016)

Timeline

DEC.08.00

Born in Bulgaria.

2000-2005

Going to kindergarten in Bulgaria. My parents get promoted at their workplace, which requires us to move to Seoul, SK.

2005-2009

Going to public school, but not being able to make many friends. Getting bullied often, so taking up a hobby, which is dancing. I begin dancing every night to popular K-Pop songs in my room, and deciding that becoming an idol is my dream.

OCT.2009

I begin auditioning for SM, YG, JYP, but am continuously rejected for being too young, not being able to sing and rap. I go to every audition I can, which my family soon finds out about. I get scolded a lot afterwards, but I decide to prove everyone wrong, so I begin training in my room to sing and rap.

DEC.2009

I decide to audition for SM Ent. one last time. The judges already know me by then. They give me one last chance, and after a lot of mumbling from their side, they tell me they will call me soon.

JAN.2010

I begin training under SM Ent. There aren't many trainees my age, so I befriend older trainees, which are Sehun (EXO), Johnny (NCT), Irene (Red Velvet). Soon after I begin training, my family informs me that they will be moving back to Bulgaria, where my older brother can receive better higher education there, so I am left alone in Seoul. They tell me to come with them, but becoming an Idol is my dream, so I refuse, to which they get furious, and tell me never to contact them ever again.

2011-2012

I become great friends with Yeri (Red Velvet) and we train together, aligned for the same group. We are roommates, so we become good friends the moment she becomes a trainee. I've gone no contact with my family, aside from my aunt, uncle and cousin. I also befriend Mark (NCT), but we get close due to me not being able to speak good Korean and communicating in English instead (same situation with Johnny). He helps me improve both my English, and my Korean.

The rest of the years leading up to my debut are honestly kind of boring but some key moments are :

Not debuting with Yeri

Becoming the greatest friends with Donghyuck/Haechan (NCT), which we still are to this day

Dating History

Vernon ( Seventeen ) May 19 2017 - January 11, 2018, 8 months Age Difference : 2 years Reason for break up : Falling off, companies finding out.

Juyeon (The Boyz) October 16 2018 until August 15 2019, almost 10 months Age Difference : 2 years Reason for break up : He was cheating on me

Taeyong (NCT) February 10 2020-January 10 2021; March 11 2021 - ongoing Age Difference : 5 years Reason for a break : Fans speculating our relationship, so we didn't know how they would react if they were proven right, so we decided to take a break

[a-night-like--this]

††† (Crosses) Announce New Album Featuring Robert Smith & El-P

††† released their debut album Crosses in 2014, and then they went active until the very end of 2021, when they returned with their cover of the Q Lazzarus Silence Of The Lambs jam “Goodbye Horses.” Since then, ††† have released their PERMANENT.RADIENT EP, as well as a version of the George Michael classic “One More Try.” Now, ††† are finally getting ready to unleash their sophomore LP.

This fall, ††† will release their new LP Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. The album has guest appearances from two artists who Chino Moreno obviously reveres: Robert Smith, of the Cure, and El-P, of Run The Jewels and Company Flow and his own damn self. Today, ††† have shared a cinematic video for their new single “Invisible Hand,” a crunching and semi-industrial electronic rock track. Shaun Lopez co-directed the clip with Lorenzo Carrera.

On the subject of the new LP, Chino Moreno says, “When we started working on Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete., there was so much more light coming in my life, for numerous reasons. There’s a lot more optimism. Even the darker themes are more romanticized and not coming from a place of despair.” Along with the new album, ††† have also announced plans for a few shows this fall — mostly in California, along with one in New York. Below, check out the “Invisible Hand” video, the album’s tracklist, and the dates for those shows.

TRACKLIST:

01 “Pleasure”

02 “Invisible Hand”

03 “Found”

04 “Light As A Feather”

05 “Pulseplagg”

05 “Runner”

06 “Big Youth” (Feat. El-P)

07 “End Youth (Reprise)”

08 “Last Rites”

09 “Ghost Ride”

10 “Grace”

11 “Eraser”

12 “Natural Selection”

13 “Girls Float † Boys Cry” (Feat. Robert Smith)

14 “Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete.”

Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete. is out 10/13 on Warner Records.

Brian Ziff

[absolutebl]

2023 UPCOMING BL

Okay, these are all the BLs (I know of) that have been announced for 2023. Not counting stuff currently airing. All of this must be considered SPECULATIVE. Don’t you dare blame me if these don’t happen. You read this post knowing that. Agreed? Please remember:

7 Golden rules of BL!

Never trust:

a Thai trailer,

a Viki Category,

a Vietnamese sub,

an MDL description,

a Taiwanese title,

Japan,

or a BL made before 2014.

FAQ: How long does it usually take from an announcement to getting more info on a BL being made?

Because people have asked I have put the ones I am most excited about in bold. 

Vietnamese & Pinoy BL not chronicled, it's just too challenging. 

Supposedly Jan 2023 

01/29 The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu - Japan for Gag Trailer. Stars Toshiki Seto (Senpai, This Can't Be Love). In 10 days, the world will be destroyed by a meteor. To spend his remaining time as comfortably as possible, bad-luck magnet Masumi decides to visit the library and read as much as he wants until the end comes. There he meets the one man from his past that he never wanted to see again, Ritsu. You should expect this to end badly.

The Luminous Solution - Thai, PTG Entertainment: Stars Gun Napat (Love By Chance/ Golden Blood), Bhu Bhudis (Manner Of Death)

Hit Bite Love - Thai Jinloe Media Works. BONKERS incomprehensible MDL description. 

Nilundon - Thai: Postponed from 2021 to recast one of the leads, never a good sign. Ensemble of 2 BLs + 1 GL, featuring adult characters, cafe, rich/poor. About a freelance photographer and heir to a famed Seoul hotel and restaurant business who, following a family death, returns to Thailand and meets a gregarious young barista. Side romances: producer is head-over-heels in love with her YouTubing bestie, and a veterinarian falls in love with the lead character’s impish cousin.

Time The Series - Thai (trailer), lakorn we think, not strictly BL 

Supposedly Feb 2023

02/10 Egoist - Japan This is about an openly gay but vein and superficial man (Hio) who falls in love with a personal trainer (Ryohei) who is stuck taking care of his sick mother. It’s not BL, it’s gay coming of age and we can’t expect it to end happily. Still, I’ll try to watch it. Japanese movies are notoriously difficult to get ahold of, tho. One of my absolute favorite Japanese actors Hio Miyazawa (from His the movie) has the lead in this movie adaptation of Makoto Takayama’s autobiographical novel Egoist. He’ll be opposite super famous actor Ryohei Suzuki.

02/14 Moments Of Love - Thai (Foremorfilm Production) Trailer Golf Tanwarin (609 Bedtime Story & The Eclipse) directs SmartJames (LeonPhob from Don't Say No).

02/18 Chains of Heart - Thai Trailer Suspense thriller about a forest ranger, smugglers, memory loss, and lost love. Stars Haii (Cirrus in TT2) and Poppy (Porpla in YYY). Adapted from a Y-novel of the same name by TJ Tommy.

02/27 Tin Tam Jai - Thai (MFlow Entertainment on iQIYI) Tin has always been secretly in love with P'Phak son of the neighborhood baker. Producers behind Ai Long Nhai and Coffee Melody so don't expect much.

Supposedly March 2023

03/09 Love Syndrome (characters from Unforgotten Night) - Thai trailer Day and It have been together for 2 years. An accident leaves Day seriously injured and It blames himself. Then Day wakes up with amnesia. (stars Frank of FrankDrake) based on a y-novel.

JAPAN 2023 

Our Dining Table AKA Bokura no Shokutaku - Mira Ori's BLOVED manga (especially be me) is getting an adaptation (HOPEFULLY THIS YEAR)! Lonely salaryman (talented cook) gets accidentally adopted by a college kid and his baby brother. They build a family together. This is a sweetly gentle and cozy manga and it will make a GREAT live action piece. I’ve recommended the manga in the past to anyone who likes BLs like Ingredients, To My Star, What Did You Eat Yesterday? and I think we are in for similar gay domesticity to Old Fashion Cupcake with this adaptation YAY!

My Beautiful Man Eternal AKA Utsukushii Kare 2 - trailer I’m very nervous, I think this series stands alone and is perfect as it already is. I’m worried Japan is over egging the pudding. More here.

Takumi-kun - No Japan, back away slowly. We do not need this. No one wants it. 

KOREA 2023

Bump Up Business (OnlyOneOf) - (Idol Romance) Announcement  More gossip. Depicts the tickling love story between a trainee who is about to debut and a celebrity from the same agency. Kpop boy group OnlyOneOf has collectively signed up to be in this idol-based BL. They’ve been auditioning for this since Libido IMHO. You can watch me chronicle their BL MV series in this post. Idol Romance will do sad but can do good kisses (Wish You, Nobleman Ryu, Once Again, Kissable Lips, Poongduck 304, Tasty Florida, Tinted With You). More info here. 

Blueming 2 - likely to air on iQIYI This was one of my favorites from 2022 year (9/10). I’m not thrilled about a 2nd season. It’s the same director as TMS2, and I didn’t like that one all that much. Still, I’m always intersted in where Korea goes when it’s given enough rope to hang itself.

Comfort the Boy - Premiere postponed indefinitely due to actor contract conflict, rated R15+ due to topic & vulgarity. Adaptation of Dongmul's manwha A Shoulder to Cry On, high school set, features a teasing confident gay, and a rich/poor pairing, about homophobia/gossip putting a scholarship in jeopardy. Was to stars idols Jaehan & Yechan BOTH from Kpop group OMEGA X. But given the crisis in management with that group, I think this is unlikely to happen, at least with this pair. 

First Love's User Manual - Korea (Silkwood) Thai BL pair TutorYim to star (?) in this KBL under A-Plan International’s Silkwood (Peach Of Time). No further info, no MDL listing. Could all be rumors. 

Heesu In Class 2 -  Korea's gay version of Sex Education. Heesu’s world revolves around Chanyoung, his best friend and secret crush. He doesn’t mind cheering Chanyoung from the sidelines or listening to all his girl problems. Then one day, Heesu starts hearing his name everywhere - on the bus, in the halls, during lunch. Turns out, there’s a rumor: Got a love problem? Find Heesu in Class 2 and he’ll tell you what to do! With that, Heesu suddenly finds himself the center of attention. But how could he give anyone advice? He doesn’t even know what to do about his own crush! Well known child actor Ahn Ji Ho (All of Us Are Dead) to lead.

Jump the series - Korea (SOL Entertainment probably for Gaga) Trailer From the producers of Cherry Blossoms and others. Coming-of-age drama that'jumps' to the next chapters of life: love, friendship, competition, mistakes, dreams and hopes.

Liquor - I got nothing but rumors. 

Star Struck AKA Starstruck - Korea (Terapin Studio) A boy has had a crush on his childhood friend for a long time. Stars Zuho (Kpop SF9 - noted good egg) opposite rookie actor Kim In Sung, based on a web novel of the same name.

Unintentional Love Story - Ceramic artist Yoon Tae Joon disappears from society, while Ji Won Young is an employee at a large company. Ji Won Young is intent on winning over the heart of Yoon Tae Joon as he's the company chairman's favorite artist. Stars actor Cha Seo Wo and idol Gongchan (maknae of B1A4, welcome to the fray Kpop Gen 2).

Why R U? Korean remake - filming sept 22 Apparently Korea is planning a remake of Why R U? which I find absolutely hilarious. I mean if Korea remakes it, we lose all the sexy and then would we have a story at all. No we would not. It’d be like one of those mesh shopping bags. MaxNat have a  cameo. 

TAIWAN 2023

Lapluie - Depicts the story of two young men: one who never believes in fate/destiny while the other one is waiting for his soulmate.

Marry My Dead Body - Taiwan Police officer forced to marry a ghost. Movie.

Miracle - High School student goes to jail because of his ganster lover. Or something. https://mydramalist.com/696341-miracle

THAILAND 2023

Are you ready? 

2 Worlds (Domundi MaxNat) - Parallel worlds love triangle story with MaxNat as the leads (finally!) PuPa & Kram are in love but PuPa is murdered and Kram is pulled into a parallel world. In that place, 12 years ago, Kram & Tai were in love but Kram was killed by Tai's dad. Now Tai encounters the Kram from another world, what will happen next? Is this a second chance or is Kram sill morning his dead lover, and does Tai need to help him get home or convince him to stay?

A Boss and a Babe GMMTV YouTube (ForceBook) - Chay is a gamer who wants to get big in the e-sports industry. However, his plans are dramatically altered when is made to intern at a company. There his boss Gun has him do some pretty weird errands, confusing Chay about his true intentions. 

Be Mine SuperStar (JaFirst) - Filming started Dec 2022 Third-year film student Punn (Ja) gets an internship on the set of a drama. He’s come there to learn from professionals, but what lights his passion even more than the work is leading man Achi, beloved of the nation. Adapted from the novel “The Superstar and the Puppy on Set” (พี่พระเอกกับเด็กหมาในกอง) by Orpheus, the show has an ensemble cast comprising Ben (2moons2), Bosston (UWMA, Between Us), Jo (War of Y, My Roommate, Make It Right 2), Kokliang and (TharnType, Even Sun).

Be My Favorite AKA You Are My Favorite (GMMTV) YouTube - Adapted from a JittiRain y-novel (2gether) one of those rewrite the past to change the future. Another timeslip? (That’s at least 5 from Thailand in 2022). Trailer features classic tropes: elevator, rooftop assignation, lie on ground. Stars Krist (SOTUS) + Mike Gawin. Who knew Krist would do a BL again? Like seriously? 

Bed Friend (Domundi probably for Viki) - Adapted from a Y-novel (same setting as Middleman’s Love) about Uea (reserved and shy and hates players) and King (a big time flirt) who work in the same office and share a best friend. Despite the fact that they don’t really like each other they end up in bed together. This pair was originally supposed to be just side dishes for Middle Love, but it seems they got their own series. Not sure if this is a lesson learned from Why R U?, a lockdown necessity, a shifting to an En of Love model, or if NetJames did so well in rehearsal they earned their own series. They are crazy beautiful together. I think Domundi will use these two to bring higher heat, just like they did with FighterTutor. This series could be good especially as it is based on a book so hopefully it has PLOT. James was Gui’s best friend in Oxygen and one of my top picks at the time to get his own BL. Net was an established actor prior to BL. I am VERY excited about this pair

Big Dragon 2 - whatever 

Boy Never Smiles (KimCop trailer) - Follows the story of a young man who travels to the future. To return, he must make that boy smile.

Buddy Line Y Animal (Ultimate Troop) From the Yearbook (ugh) people and based on 4 y-novels written by Scriper, I'll only binge this. Stars Man & Tile (Yearbook), Oat (Make it Right), and unknowns.

Cafe In Love - When his coffee shop close, he tries everything to get it to reopen and falls in love along the way. New Thai pulp, stars the actor who played Noh’s best friend Ohm in Love Sick 2.

Cherry Magic (Thai remake w/ TayNew) GMMTV YouTube - no one asked for this 

Cinderella Boys (Cloth Lab) - production house brought us Restated (which I never watched) and never got EngSub.

City of Stars AKA Fueangnakorn - An actor falls in love with a programmer and the narrative intends to “explore the ramifications of being public figure in the social network era who must endure critics, bullying, and defamation.” Looks like another Lovely Writer / Call It What You Want sort of thing.

Cooking Crush (OffGun) GMMTV YouTube - Prem, Dynamite, and Samsi run a not-so-popular restaurant. With heavy losses, the trio find out about a cooking competition with a huge reward that could help their business. However, preparations go awry, and Prem decides to back out when he meets Ten, a medical student under a heavy stress burden. Ten approaches prem to teach him cooking, and Prem uses this as a scam opportunity to make money. However, as the lessons go on, it isn’t the food that’s hot, but also their faces as they slowly fall for each other. Adapted from the novel “Love Course! เสื้อกาวน์รุกเสื้อกุ๊กรับ” by iJune4S,

Dangerous Romance GMMTV YouTube - Sailom, a poor yet studious student, has worked several odd jobs along with his elder brother to keep his affairs in order. One day, a misunderstanding causes him to hate the school’s bully, Kongkarn. However, fate plays in and Sailom is made Kongkarn’s tutor. As they spend time together, the two realize that the two have a lot in common and their hate could turn into something more beautiful in their hearts. (Wait, didn’t we just watch this?) 

Destiny Seeker - Engineering students in university dorms, Songkram the head of dorm 3, which is where the "strong and athletic" male students are sorted. Aye is the head of dorm 2, the "good looking" male students live. Aye used to be Songkram's tutor and friend, but they fell apart after both of them were chosen to be dorm heads. Aye is actually in love with Songkram, however, he thinks Sonkram has feelings for Mean. What Aye doesn't know, is that he's the one Songkram likes. So, Bad Buddy the second coming. But also v Japanese concept. 

Heart by Heart (Half Toast Production) Trailer 1 Trailer 2 - of the same name, the trailers are GOOD. I’m more excited for this one then I thought I'd be. Has a bit of Tasty Florida, bad boy/good boy, high drama going on. Stars all unknowns but they look like decent actors.

Hidden Agenda (JoongDunk) GMMTV YouTube - Zo, a college freshman whose never been in love, decides to change it by making the college’s popular girl Nita as his girlfriend. However, to woo her, he approaches Joke, Nita’s ex, for dating advice. What he fails to realize is that Joke has had his eyes on him for a long time and uses this opportunity to approach Zo. Will Joke succeed?

Hot Bamee and Yummy Gyogung (9Cats Studio) - stars Nutt Witsarut (Daisy from SCOY) as Gyogung & Boat Yongyut (Tim from My Secret Love) as Bamee.

House of Stars Trailer - an LGBTQ actor falls in love with an actor from another company at first sight.

I Feel You Linger in the Air (Dee Hup for WeTV) - This is a time travel historical romance (1920s) adaption of y-novel by Violet Rain . FROM THAILAND! H I S T O R I C A L ! ! ! Heartbroken architect is transported to the 1930s. Movie from the producers of Lovely Writer.

Last Twilight (JimmySea) GMMTV YouTube - Burdened with heavy debt, Mork, a mechanic, is forced to take a high paying job as a caretaker for Day, a rich heir who suffers from partial blindness after an accident. Day recruits Mork as he realizes the latter does not see him as a disabled person, but rather as co-equals. As they spend time together, the two begin developing feelings for the other. However with Day just having 180 days until he becomes permanently blind, how will the two weather the trials ahead?

Lost in the Woods - Fifa, a high school student preparing to enter university, is given the duty of taking care of his grandma in the province before the school year starts. There he meets Chief Hem, a forest ranger.

Love Upon a Time - (Domundi)  NetJames in a historical BL! Also feat Tonnam (Dr Sing from Triage).

Middleman’s Love AKA Middle Love (Domundi for Viki) - Production started. This used to be a JimmyTommy vehicle before the pair split (also prev title Middle Love). Adapted from a Y-novel. Jade works as a graphic designer and has always been stuck in the middle - average. His heart is hardened after a life spent being overlooked because he is not as charming or good looking as the rest of his family or friends. When his office gets a hot new intern, Mai, Jade assumes Mai couldn’t possibly be intersted in him. Instead he believes Mai is after his friend, Uea. Mai, of course, has other ideas. To be directed by Cheewin leads recast as TutorYim (crumbs from Cutie Pie) we likey, good choice.

Make a Wish (WaGa Creative) - Started filming 12/22, stars Fluke Natouch (OhmFluke UWMA etc...) & Judo (The Miracle Of Teddy Bear) in a medical-fantasy. It seems to be a light-hearted romance with a comedic flair. About a doctor who sees ghosts and a deity who resides in a Bodhi tree that earns merits whenever he fulfills a wish. He is shocked to find the doctor can actually see him and decides to help him find the reason for his ghostly ability. Thus begins a chaotic yet romantic journey. From Sammon y-novels (Manner of Death, Triage)

Mystique in the Mirror (gossip here) - Side couple is PitchBank from Golden Blood, authored by Dr. Dr.Patrick Rangsimat (My Ride) interview here 

Naughty Babe (Domundi MaxNat gossip here) - Cutie Pie spin off feat MaxNat. 

The Next Prince (Domundi ZeeNunew) - ZeeNew in a fantasy/historical set in a palace where Zee plays a knight and Nu a prince - FUCK YES PLEASE. I did not expect this pair to stick so I really hope this happens.

Only Friends GMMTV YouTube - Friend Zone but Gay AF. Mew, a final-year university student, has never encountered the pleasures of adult life. One day, his friend Boston takes him clubbing to give him a sight of the nightlife. There, he meets Top, who tries to seduce him. Yet reluctant at first, Mew gives in and falls for Top. However, he doesn’t realize that others want to break their relationship.

Our Skyy 2 GMMTV YouTube - An eight-part anthology that continues the stories of favorite GMMTV couples: Tian & Phupha (A Tale of Thousand Stars); Pran & Pat (Bad Buddy); Khabkluen & Daonuea (Star in My Mind); Nuengdiao & Palm (Never Let Me Go); Chay & Gun (A Boss and a Babe); Talay & Puen (Vice Versa); Akk & Ayan (The Eclipse); Tin & Gun (My School President)

Pit Babe - Based on alittlebixth's omegaverse novel #พิษเบ๊บ’ set in the world of car racing (author confirmed the series will not be omegaverse).

Punk Spy - (Domundi) - Tommy (formerly JimmyTommy) to star opposite Thomas Teetut (new talent) We gonna call them TomTom as I live and breathe! Please people. Please? Small town romance of two men who keep secrets. And they are searching for the truth. Poppy (everyone’s favorite comedic character actor) is in this one too.

SHADOW - It is a teenage-detective series that involves the supernatural, psychology, love, and friendship. Depicts Dan (Singto), the new student in an all-boys Catholic school who's suffering from sleep paralysis where he saw shadows in his dream, & Nine (Fluke), a student who's condemned by his seniors for being gay. Despite Dan being seen by the other students as a freak. Nine fully understood him because he's been dealing with seeing spirits since childhood. The two became close and gossip circulated between them. Dan chooses to be his friend even if Nine falls in love with him. An interesting combination for actors for sure. 

Step By Step (Dee Hup) - age gap office romance between stern boss and sweet subordinate (AKA my catnip) Thailand doesn't have a great track record with office set BL. Thailand’s record with office set BL is terrible. But I LOVE the concept.

Wish Me Luck (Be Brave Entertainment Hub) - About a boss and his temporary employee in an advertising company, based on Bittersweet's y-novel of the same name สุดที่รักษ์. Starring my boy Fiat (Grean Fictions, SOTUS S, My Gear and Your Gown, Triage) who I’ve been waiting to lead a BL for a decade (it feels like) and Na Naphat (KinnPorsche, UWMA). Again, office BL, but gah PLEASE be good. 

Wish You Luck (StudioCommuan) - Sci Fi dystopian BL about a luck-stealer and an optimistic innocent. Stars Tonnam (Dr Sing in Triage) and Title (our beloved baby Nut from the Yearbook) in a tsundere/sunsine survivor story.

This list is updated only at the beginning of 2023. Not responsible for keeping it updated. I make no promises on anything on these list. Check the comments for updates.

One final note? 

23.5 (GL feat MilkLove) GMMTV For YT 

Ongsa, a loner all her life, falls in love at first sight with the more popular Sun. However, with the fear of being rejected, she decides to approach her under the pseudonym “Earth”. As Sun gets more and more curious about who Earth is and starts to fall for her, will Ongsa reveal herself to Sun? BL side couple. 

(source)

This post will NOT be kept up to date. As new BLs are announced and come across my radar, I will repost about them in this blog. You have to follow me to get those. I also report on new and upcoming releases once they are confirmed in my weekly updates. 

[msb-lair]

Scene Banners and Dividers - Post 12 of 12

[Post 1] [Post 2] [Post 3] [Post 4] [Post 5] [Post 6] [Post 7] [Post 8] [Post 9] [Post 10] [Post 11] [Post 12]

Decided to do a set of banners and dividers based on the scene images that would match, in style and size, my set of Coliseum Dividers. As new scenes get added to Flight Rising, they’ll get added to this set of photosets.

When linking from these images, make sure you’ve clicked on an image in the photoset and are doing your right click -> copy image link from the full size (640 pixel width) images, not from the downsized dashboard images. You are also welcome to copy these images and host them somewhere else if you find that more convenient. When attributing these images (not required) please link back to the first post.

Photoset #1:

Autumn Clearing

Foxfire Grove

Frostbite Falls

Moonbeam Aquaduct

Pillow Palace

Photoset #2:

Remembrance

Rocky Refuge

Royal Chamber

Shoreline Serenity

Starksand Dunes

Photoset #3:

Titan’s Fall

Wedfiend Cave

Lightweaver’s Domain (added 2020-06-22)

Flamecaller’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)

Stormcatcher’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)

Photoset #4 (added 2020-11-14):

Voyage of the Tenacity

Arcanist’s Domain

Plaguebringer’s Domain

Earthshaker’s Domain (added 2020-12-10)

Golem Workshop (added 2020-12-10)

Photoset #5 (added 2020-12-24):

Strange Chests

Quaint Parlor

Dusty Attic

Serpent Shrine (2021-01-22)

Icewarden’s Domain (2021-02-06)

Photoset #6 (added 2021-02-06):

Flowering Wasteland

Shadowbinder’s Domain (added 2021-02-24)

Training Field (added 2021-05-24)

Windsinger’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)

Tidelord’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)

Photoset #7 (added 2021-05-24):

Greenskeeper Gathering (added 2021-05-24)

Sandswept Delta (added 2021-06-02)

Blooming Grove (added 2021-06-02)

Arena (added 2021-06-02)

Waterway (added 2021-06-02)

Photoset #8 (added 2021-06-08):

8th Anniversary

Sunparched Prowl (added 2021-06-18)

Target Practice (added 2021-08-05)

Armory (added 2021-08-05)

Battlefield (added 2021-08-05)

Photoset #9 (added 2021-09-12):

Drakeharvest

Mire (added 2021-10-22)

Frigidfin Expedition (2021-12-20)

Enchanted Dungeon (2021-12-20)

Haunted Museum (2021-12-20)

Photoset #10 (Added 2022-02-12):

Lovebird Landscape

Garden Arches

Thunder Lizards (added 2022-02-18)

Kelp Beds (added 2022-03-19)

Ancient Harpy Canyon (2022-05-21)

Photoset #11 (2022-12-08):

Summer

Pirate Town

Autumn

Elder Sea

Harpy City (2022-12-15)

Photoset #12 (2022-12-22):

Witch’s Kitchen

Enchanted Library

Winter